Well, I caught most of the House Science Committee hearing this morning, and when I get a chance will go back to see the rest.
It played out pretty much as I thought it would. A couple of zingers at the end, though:
Marburger was asked explicitly if the President would renew PITAC, the President's IT Advisory Committee, and he was very noncommittal if not negative. PITAC spanked the Bush administration hard for not funding cyberterrorism research, and we all know how this administration treats anyone that it perceives as less than 100% loyal.
Dr. Tether, Director of DARPA, got in the last word at the end, and claimed that the computer research community has never given a specific list of what they would like to see funded, and he laid down a challenge for them to do that. This was an absolutely masterful chess move on his part, for two reasons. First, if the agenda were so well understood that there was broad consensus on specifically what research should be done, it wouldn't be research! Second, he's giving the community the impossible task of setting priorities among all the subfields within computer science.
Tether is a consummate showman. He dazzled the congressional panel with a multimedia presentation showing all the whizzy things that DARPA is working on, and quoted big funding numbers. He did, in fact, have to admit later that the lion's share of that funding is "black projects" and that they have gone more short-term and more focused on Iraq.
The most impressive and statesman-like in the group was Bill Wulf, President of the National Academy of Engineering. We should start a campaign to get him to run for W's job in 2008.
8:32:38 PM 
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